This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

iDVD at a Glance

iDVD lets you burn movies and photos to DVDs, complete with menus you can fully customize.

Designers and photographers can use iDVD to assemble digital portfolios that they can hand out like brochures. Filmmakers and advertising professionals can distribute rough cuts of movie scenes and commercials to clients and colleagues. Businesspeople can create in-house training discs and video archives of corporate meetings. Videographers can offer DVDs of weddings and other events. And home-movie buffs can preserve and share family videos and photographs.

Creating a DVD involves choosing and customizing a menu design and adding the movies and photos you want to include on the DVD. You can perform these steps in any order and preview your work along the way. When you’ve finished, you can commit the final product to a shiny platter.

Starting a New iDVD Project

Creating a DVD with iDVD involves creating a new project document, choosing and customizing a menu design theme, and adding content. Here’s how to get started.

Choose a theme and fine-tune it if you like (pages 254–257). Add movies to your DVD (page 258). Create slide shows containing your photos (pages 260–263). Explore the authoring and menu-customizing features described later in this chapter. Preview your work as you go (page 255), then burn the final product (page 276).

A Short Glossary of DVD Terms

authoring The process of creating menus and adding movies and images to a DVD.

button A clickable area that plays a movie or slide show, or takes the user to another menu.

chapter A video bookmark that you can access from a menu or with a remote control. Creating chapters in a movie lets viewers jump to specific sections.

DVD-R The blank media that you’ll use most often when burning DVDs. A DVD-R blank can be burned just once.